Economics Imperialism: SWOT Analysis

Abstract

It's been a quarter of century since one of the founders of economic imperialism was crowned with glory and awarded for the establishing of hitherto non-conventional economic approach. Application of analytical tools of economic analysis on non-economic issues has proved that economic science has the capacity and the ability to step outside traditional boundaries of the discipline. Trend of economics’ engaging with neighboring disciplines has dramatically increased since that time. Not only the narrow mainstream methodology has greatly expanded, but it proceeded in a way that the range of topics, subjected to economics’ influence, seemed to be endless. And economics imperialism continued to evolve, changing only its forms from aggressive to sophisticated one. Although suited to meet economics aspirations, it surely enabled more detailed and thorough understanding of diverse social phenomena. In spite of the fact that economics itself experienced remarkable improvements, owing to such kind of imperialism, its continuous challenging and compromising did not cease to be questioned. That is why this paper is intended to sketch SWOT analysis of economics imperialism. More precisely, its purpose is twofold: a) to review what literature lately offered about justification of economic imperialism; b) to analyze whether weaknesses it produced, within economics as well as threats stemming from outside discipline’s borders, may jeopardize future progress of economic science. We believe that this approach might be helpful for future studies, assessing in what extent the unification of the mainstream and his methodical empowerment are still sufficient to compensate limitations, imposed by economics imperialism.